05 February 2017

why you shoudn't be a top performer in the team

Often times it’s a question among IT / software engineers that, what rating I will get, he will get or she will get. People tend to worry more about ratings, especially its more true with top performing guys in the team. The top performing guys think at the times, "will I get top rating in the next current appraisal cycle or not"?

This post is not about discussing whether worrying/thinking on appraisal rating is BAD or GOOD. This blog post is ALL about, why you shouldn’t be worried about not being top performer in the team.

(Disclaimer: I am not telling you must not be a top performer in your team)

Why you shouldn’t be worried about being top performer in the team?

Consider a team of 6 people. In general among them in one or two will be too GOOD and performing most of the new / complex stuffs. The rest of the people will work with those one OR two guys who really doing great.

In this kind of usual set up, there is ample opportunity for the other 4 people to learn from the people who performing BEST in the team. The “MEETS Expectation” people can learn a lot from the TOP performing people in terms of:

best designs

best algorithm to solve a given problem & deriving at the right approach to deal with an issue

AND most importantly how do they keep abreast of themselves with latest technology or new development in their area of specialization

So “MEETS Expectations” can learn a lot of those TOP performing guys. So in effect the “Meets Expectation” people knowingly or unknowingly will become GOOD at their skills. So overtime “Meet Expectation” can COMPLETE with TOP performing people in the team.

On other hand the “TOP performing” people doesn’t have the ADVANTAGE of working with people who are really smarter than themselves.

So I think from gaining knowledge perspective (in this knowledge based economy) it’s better to work with the people who are SMARTER than yourself. In that setup you will be becoming smarter and smarter with every day passes by working with people smarter than you. So feel free to change team / company to work with the people who are smarter than you.

Hence the post catchy title “why you shouldn’t be a top performer in the team”.